Laura Forster

Laura Forster (1858–1917) was an Australian medical doctor, surgeon and nurse noted for her service in Belgium and Russia during World War I.

Early life

Forster was born in the Sydney suburb of Ryde in 1858 to William Forster, a politician and Premier of New South Wales during 1850–1860, and his wife Eliza Jane Wall. After finishing school in Sydney, she travelled to Switzerland to study medicine in Bern.

Career

After completing dual training as both a doctor and a nurse, Forster settled in England and practiced medicine in Oxford. In 1912, at the outbreak of the First Balkan War, she travelled to Epirus to work as a nurse. Soon after World War I began in 1914, she began working for the Belgian Field Hospital in Antwerp. She was the first Australian female doctor to travel to Belgium to assist in the wartime medical effort, at a time women doctors were not allowed to enlist in the Allied medical corps. When Belgium was evacuated, she went to France, where she assisted Belgians who had been wounded in the German bombardment. She then relocated to Russia and volunteered in the surgical department of Petrograd's largest hospital for several months before being employed by a hospital unit financed by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. From there, she travelled with the Russian Red Cross to the Caucasus, where she performed surgical duties, and directed a hospital in Erzurum for a time before returning to Russia. She was then placed in charge of a hospital in Zalishchyky, Galicia.

Death

Forster died on 11 February 1917 in Zalishchyky, from heart failure after a week-long illness with influenza. She was buried in Zalishchyky with Russian rites, which included burial in an open coffin. Nurses from the hospital that Forster ran placed a homemade Union Jack flag over her body.